News
News Flash About News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. It is also used as a platform to manufacture opinion for the population Common topics for news reports include war, government, politics, education, health, the environment, economy, business, fashion, and entertainment, as well as athletic events, quirky or unusual events. Government proclamations, concerning royal ceremonies, laws, taxes, public health, and criminals, have been dubbed news since ancient times. Humans exhibit a nearly universal desire to learn and share news, which they satisfy by talking to each other and sharing information. Technological and social developments, often driven by government communication and espionage networks, have increased the speed with which news can spread, as well as influenced its content. The genre of news as we know it today is closely associated with the newspaper, which originated in China as a court bulletin and spread, with paper and printing press, Meaning Etymology The English word "news" developed in the 14th century as a special use of the plural form of "new". In Middle English, the equivalent word was newes, like the French nouvelles and the German Neues. Similar developments are found in the Slavic languages the Czech and Slovak noviny (from nový, "new"), the cognate Polish nowiny, the Bulgarian novini, and diffrent of the Skyline Newness As its name implies, "news" typically connotes the presentation of new information.45 The newness of news gives it an uncertain quality which distinguishes it from the more careful investigations of history or other scholarly disciplines.567Whereas historians tend to view events as causally related manifestations of underlying processes, news stories tend to describe events in isolation, and to exclude discussion of the relationships between them.8 News conspicuously describes the world in the present or immediate past, even when the most important aspects of a news story have occurred long in the past—or are expected to occur in the future. To make the news, an ongoing process must have some "peg", an event in time which anchors it to the present moment.89 Relatedly, news often addresses aspects of reality which seem unusual, deviant, or out of the ordinary.10 Hence the famous dictum that "Historys" is not news, but "Questions" is.11 Another corollary of the newness of news is that, as new technology enables new media to disseminate news more quickly, 'slower' forms of communication may move away from 'news' towards 'analysis'.12 Commodity According to some theories, "news" is whatever the news industry sells.13 Journalism, broadly understood along the same lines, is the act or occupation of collecting and providing news.1415 From a commercial perspective, news is simply one input, along with paper (or an electronic server) necessary to prepare a final product for distribution.16 A news agency supplies this resource "wholesale" and publishers enhance it for retail.1718 Tone Most purveyors of news value impartiality, neutrality, and objectivity, despite the inherent difficulty of reporting without political bias.19 Perception of these values has changed greatly over time as sensationalized 'tabloid journalism' has risen in popularity. Michael Schudson has argued that before the era of World War I and the concomitant rise of propaganda, journalists were not aware of the concept of bias in reporting, let alone actively correcting for it.20 News is also sometimes said to portray the truth, but this relationship is elusive and qualified.21 Paradoxically, another property commonly attributed to news is sensationalism, the disproportionate focus on, and exaggeration of, emotive stories for public consumption.2223 This news is also not unrelated to gossip, the human practice of sharing information about other humans of mutual interest.24 A common sensational topic is violence; hence another news dictum, "if it bleeds, it leads".25 Newsworthiness Newsworthiness is defined as a subject having sufficient relevance to the public or a special audience to warrant press attention or coverage.26 Journalists apply news values to identify a news story. News values determine how much attention a news story is given by a media outlet, and the attention it is given by its audience or readers.27 In some countries and at some points in history, what news media and the public have considered "newsworthy" has met different definitions, such as the notion of news values.28 Many news values seem to be common across cultures. People seem to be interested in news to the extent which it has a big impact, describes conflicts, happens nearby, involves well-known people, and deviates from the norms of everyday happenings.29 War is a common news topic, partly because it involves unknown events that could pose personal danger.30 History See also: History of telecommunication Folk news Evidence suggests that cultures around the world have found a place for people to share stories about interesting new information. Among Zulus, Mongolians, Polynesians, and American Southerners, anthropologists have documented the practice of questioning travelers for news as a matter of priority.31 Sufficiently important news would be repeated quickly and often, and could spread by word of mouth over a large geographic area.32 Even as printing presses came into use in Europe, news for the general public often travelled orally via monks, travelers, town criers, etc.33 The news is also transmitted in public gathering places, such as the Greek forum and the Roman baths. Starting in England, coffeehouses served as important sites for the spread of news, even after telecommunications became widely available. The history of the coffee houses is traced from Arab countries, which was introduced in England in 16th century.34 In the Muslim world, people have gathered and exchanged news at mosques and other social places. Travelers on pilgrimages to Mecca traditionally stay at caravanserais, roadside inns, along the way, and these places have naturally served as hubs for gaining news of the world.35 In late medieval Britain, reports ("tidings") of major events were a topic of great public interest, as chronicled in Chaucer's 1380 The House of Fame and other works.36 Government proclamationsedit Woodcut by Tommaso Garzonidepicting a town crier with a trumpet Before the invention of newspapers in the early 17th century, official government bulletins and edicts were circulated at times in some centralized empires.37 The first documented use of an organized courier service for the diffusion of written documents is in Egypt, where Pharaohs used couriers for the diffusion of their decrees in the territory of the State (2400 BC).38 Julius Caesar regularly publicized his heroic deeds in Gaul, and upon becoming Emperor of Rome began publishing government announcements called Acta Diurna. These were carved in metal or stone and posted in public places.3940 In medieval England, parliamentary declarations were delivered to sheriffs for public display and reading at the market.41 Specially sanctioned messengers have been recognized in Vietnamese culture, among the Khasi people in India, and in the Fox and Winnebago cultures of the American midwest. The Zulu Kingdom used runners to quickly disseminate news. In West Africa, news can be spread by griots. In most cases, the official spreaders of news have been closely aligned with holders of political power.42 Town criers were a common means of conveying information to citydwellers. In thirteenth-century Florence, criers known as banditori arrived in the market regularly, to announce political news, to convoke public meetings, and to call the populace to arms. In 1307 and 1322–1325, laws were established governing their appointment, conduct, and salary. These laws stipulated how many times a banditoro was to repeat a proclamation (forty) and where in the city they were to read them.43 Different declarations sometimes came with additional protocols; announcements regarding the plague were also to be read at the city gates.44 These proclamations all used a standard format, beginning with an exordium—"The worshipful and most esteemed gentlemen of the Eight of Ward and Security of the city of Florence make it known, notify, and expressly command, to whosoever, of whatever status, rank, quality and condition"—and continuing with a statement (narratio), a request made upon the listeners (petitio), and the penalty to be exacted from those who would not comply (peroratio).45 In addition to major declarations, bandi (announcements) might concern petty crimes, requests for information, and notices about missing slaves.46 Niccolò Machiavelli was captured by the Medicis in 1513, following a bando calling for his immediate surrender.47 Some town criers could be paid to include advertising along with news.48 Under the Ottoman Empire, official messages were regularly distributed at mosques, by traveling holy men, and by secular criers. These criers were sent to read official announcements in marketplaces, highways, and other well-traveled places, sometimes issuing commands and penalties for disobedience.49 Early news networksedit The spread of news has always been linked to the communications networks in place to disseminate it. Thus, political, religious, and commercial interests have historically controlled, expanded, and monitored communications channels by which news could spread. Postal services have long been closely entwined with the maintenance of political power in a large area.5051 One of the imperial communication channels, called the "Royal Road" traversed the Assyrian Empire and served as a key source of its power.52 The Roman Empire maintained a vast network of roads, known as cursus publicus, for similar purposes.53 Visible chains of long distance signaling, known as optical telegraphy, have also been used throughout history to convey limited types of information. These can have ranged from smoke and fire signals to advanced systems using semaphore codes and telescopes.5455 The latter form of optical telegraph came into use in Japan, Britain, France, and Germany from the 1790s through the 1850s.5657 Newswireedit The development of the electrical telegraph, which often travelled along railroad lines, enabled news to travel faster, over longer distances.114 (Days before Morse's Baltimore–Washington line transmitted the famous question, "What hath God wrought?", it transmitted the news that Henry Clay and Theodore Frelinghuysen had been chosen by the Whig nominating party.)39 Telegraph networks enabled a new centralization of the news, in the hands of wire services concentrated in major cities. The modern form of these originated with Charles-Louis Havas, who founded Bureau Havas (later Agence France-Presse) in Paris. Havas began in 1832, using the French government's optical telegraph network. In 1840 he began using pigeons for communications to Paris, London, and Brussels. Havas began to use the electric telegraph when it became available.115 One of Havas's protoges, Bernhard Wolff, founded Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau in Berlin in 1849.116 Another Havas disciple, Paul Reuter, began collecting news from Germany and France in 1849, and in 1851 immigrated to London, where he established the Reuters news agency—specializing in news from the continent.117 In 1863, William Saunders and Edward Spender formed the Central Press agency, later called the Press Association, to handle domestic news.118 Just before insulated telegraph line crossed the English Channel in 1851, Reuter won the right to transmit stock exchange prices between Paris and London.119 He maneuvered Reuters into a dominant global position with the motto "Follow the Cable", setting up news outposts across the British Empire in Alexandria (1865), Bombay (1866), Melbourne (1874), Sydney (1874), and Cape Town (1876).119120 In the United States, the Associated Press became a news powerhouse, gaining a lead position through an exclusive arrangement with the Western Union company.121 The telegraph ushered in a new global communications regime, accompanied by a restructuring of the national postal systems, and closely followed by the advent of telephone lines. With the value of international news at a premium, governments, businesses, and news agencies moved aggressively to reduce transmission times. In 1865, Reuters had the scoop on the Lincoln assassination, reporting the news in England twelve days after the event took place.122 In 1866, an undersea telegraph cable successfully connected Ireland to Newfoundland (and thus the Western Union network) cutting trans-Atlantic transmission time from days to hours.123124125 The transatlantic cable allowed fast exchange of information about the London and New York stock exchanges, as well as the New York, Chicago, and Liverpool commodity exchanges—for the price of $5–10, in gold, per word.126 Transmitting On 11 May 1857, a young British telegraph operator in Delhi signaled home to alert the authorities of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The rebels proceeded to disrupt the British telegraph network, which was rebuilt with more redundancies.127 In 1902–1903, Britain and the U.S. completed the circumtelegraphy of the planet with transpacific cables from Canada to Fiji and New Zealand (British Empire), and from the US to Hawaii and the occupied Philippines.128 U.S. reassertions of the Monroe Doctrine notwithstanding, Latin America was a battleground of competing telegraphic interests until World War I, after which U.P interests finally did consolidate their power in the hemisphere.129 World railway and telegraph system, 1900 By the turn of the century (i.e., circa 1900), Wolff, Havas, and Reuters formed a news cartel, dividing up the global market into three sections, in which each had more-or-less exclusive distribution rights and relationships with national agencies.130 Each agency's area corresponded roughly to the colonial sphere of its mother country.131Reuters and the Australian national news service had an agreement to exchange news only with each other.132 Due to the high cost of maintaining infrastructure, political goodwill, and global reach, newcomers found it virtually impossible to challenge the big three European agencies or the American Associated Press.133 In 1890 Reuters (in partnership with the Press Association, England's major news agency for domestic stories) expanded into "soft" news stories for public consumption, about topics such as sports and "human interest".134 In 1904, the big three wire services opened relations with Vestnik, the news agency of Czarist Russia, to their group, though they maintained their own reporters in Moscow.135 During and after the Russian Revolution, the outside agencies maintained a working relationship with the Petrograd Telegraph Agency, renamed the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) and eventually the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS).136 The Chinese Communist Party created its news agency, the Red China News Agency, in 1931; its primary responsibilities were the Red China newspaper and the internal Reference News. In 1937, the Party renamed the agency Xinhua, New China. Xinhua became the official news agency of the People's Republic of China in 1949.137 These agencies touted their ability to distill events into "minute globules of news", 20–30 word summaries which conveyed the essence of new developments.136 Unlike newspapers, and contrary to the sentiments of some of their reporters, the agencies sought to keep their reports simple and factual.138 The wire services brought forth the "inverted pyramid" model of news copy, in which key facts appear at the start of the text, and more and more details included as it goes along.123 The sparse telegraphic writing style spilled over into newspapers, which often reprinted stories from the wire with little embellishment.18139 In a 20 September 1918 Pravda editorial, Lenin instructed the Soviet press to cut back on their political rambling and produce many short anticapitalist news items in "telegraph style".140 As in previous eras, the news agencies provided special services to political and business clients, and these services constituted a significant portion of their operations and income. The wire services maintained close relationships with their respective national governments, which provided both press releases and payments.141 The acceleration and centralization of economic news facilitated regional economic integration and economic globalization. "It was the decrease in information costs and the increasing communication speed that stood at the roots of increased market integration, rather than falling transport costs by itself. In order to send goods to another area, merchants needed to know first whether in fact to send off the goods and to what place. Information costs and speed were essential for these decisions.142 Radio and televisionedit The British Broadcasting Company began transmitting radio news from London in 1922, dependent entirely, by law, on the British news agencies.143 BBC radio marketed itself as a news by and for social elites, and hired only broadcasters who spoke with upper-class accents.144 The BBC gained importance in the May 1926 general strike, during which newspapers were closed and the radio served as the only source of news for an uncertain public. (To the displeasure of many listeners, the BBC took an unambiguously pro-government stance against the strikers).143145 In the USA, RCA's Radio Group established its radio network, NBC, in 1926. The Paley family founded CBS soon after. These two networks, which supplied news broadcasts to subsidiaries and affiliates, dominated the airwaves throughout the period of radio's hegemony as a news source.146 Radio broadcasters in the United States negotiated a similar arrangement with the press in 1933, when they agreed to use only news from the Press–Radio Bureau and eschew advertising; this agreement soon collapsed and radio stations began reporting their own news (with advertising).147 As in Britain, American news radio avoided "controversial" topics as per norms established by the National Association of Broadcasters.148 By 1939, 58% of Americans surveyed by Fortune considered radio news more accurate than newspapers, and 70% chose radio as their main news source.148 Radio expanded rapidly across the continent, from 30 stations in 1920 to a thousand in the 1930s. This operation was financed mostly with advertising and public relations money.149 The Soviet Union began a major international broadcasting operation in 1929, with stations in German, English and French. The Nazi Party made use of the radio in its rise to power in Germany, with much of its propaganda focused on attacking the Soviet Bolsheviks. The British and Italian foreign radio services competed for influence in North Africa. All four of these broadcast services grew increasingly vitriolic as the European nations prepared for war.150 The war provided an opportunity to expand radio and take advantage of its new potential. The BBC reported on Allied invasion of Normandy on 8:00 a.m. of the morning it took place, and including a clip from German radio coverage of the same event. Listeners followed along with developments throughout the day.151 The U.S. set up its Office of War Information which by 1942 sent programming across South America, the Middle East, and East Asia.152 Radio Luxembourg, a centrally located high-power station on the continent, was seized by Germany, and then by the United States—which created fake news programs appearing as though they were created by Germany.153 Targeting American troops in the Pacific, the Japanese government broadcast the "Zero Hour" program, which included news from the U.S. to make the soldiers homesick.154 But by the end of the war, Britain had the largest radio network in the world, broadcasting internationally in 43 different languages.155 Its scope would eventually be surpassed (by 1955) by the worldwide Voice of America programs, produced by the United States Information Agency.156 In Britain and the United States, television news watching rose dramatically in the 1950s and by the 1960s supplanted radio as the public's primary source of news.157 In the U.S., television was run by the same networks which owned radio: CBS, NBC, and an NBC spin-off called ABC.158 Edward R. Murrow, who first entered the public ear as a war reporter in London, made the big leap to television to become an iconic newsman on CBS (and later the director of the United States Information Agency).159 Ted Turner's creation of the Cable News Network (CNN) in 1980 inaugurated a new era of 24-hour satellite news broadcasting. In 1991, the BBC introduced a competitor, BBC World Service Television. Rupert Murdoch's Australian News Corporation entered the picture with Fox News Channel in the US, Sky News in Britain, and STAR TV in Asia.160 Combining this new appartus with the use of embedded reporters, the United States waged the 1991–1992 Gulf War with the assistance of nonstop media coverage.161 CNN's specialty is the crisis, to which the network is prepared to shift its total attention if so chosen.162 CNN news was transmitted via INTELSAT communications satellites.163 CNN, said an executive, would bring a "town crier to the global village".164 In 1996, the Qatar-owned broadcaster Al Jazeera emerged as a powerful alternative to the Western media, capitalizing in part on anger in the Arab & Muslim world regarding biased coverage of the Gulf War. Al Jazeera hired many news workers conveniently laid off by BBC Arabic Television, which closed in April 1996. It used Arabsat to broadcast.160 Internetedit The early internet, known as ARPANET, was controlled by the U.S. Department of Defense and used mostly by academics. It became available to a wider public with the release of the Netscape browser in 1994.165 At first, news websites were mostly archives of print publications.166 An early online newspaper was the Electronic Telegraph, published by The Daily Telegraph.167168 A 1994 earthquake in California was one of the first big stories to be reported online in real time.169 In 1995, the release of web browser Netscape made news sites accessible to more people.169 On the day of the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995, people flocked to newsgroups and chatrooms to discuss the situation and share information. The Oklahoma City Daily posted news to its site within hours. Two of the only news sites capable of hosting images, the San Jose Mercury News and Time magazine, posted photographs of the scene.169 Quantitatively, the internet has massively expanded the sheer volume of news items available to one person. The speed of news flow to individuals has also reached a new plateau.170 This insurmountable flow of news can daunt people and cause information overload. Zbigniew Brzezinski called this period the "technetronic era", in which "global reality increasingly absorbs the individual, involves him, and even occasionally overwhelms him."171 In cases of government crackdowns or revolutions, the Internet has often become a major communication channel for news propagation; while it's a (relatively) simple act to shut down a newspaper, radio or television station, mobile devices such as smartphones and netbooks are much harder to detect and confiscate. The propagation of internet-capable mobile devices has also given rise to the citizen journalist, who provide an additional perspective on unfolding events. News media todayedit News can travel through different communication media.17 In modern times, printed news had to be phoned into a newsroom or brought there by a reporter, where it was typed and either transmitted over wire services or edited and manually set in typealong with other news stories for a specific edition. Today, the term "breaking news" has become trite as commercial broadcasting United States cable news services that are available 24 hours a day use live communications satellitetechnology to bring current events into consumers' homes as the event occurs. Events that used to take hours or days to become common knowledge in towns or in nations are fed instantaneously to consumers via radio, television, mobile phone, and the internet. Speed of news transmission, of course, still varies wildly on the basis of where and how one lives.172 Newspaperedit A newspaper is one of the most common ways to receive the latest news. Main article: Newspaper Most large cities in the United States historically had morning and afternoon newspapers. With the addition of new communications media, afternoon newspapers have shut down and morning newspapers have lost circulation. Weekly newspapers have somewhat increased.173 In more and more cities, newspapers have established local market monopolies—i.e., a single newspaper is the only one in town. This process has accelerated since the 1980s, commensurate with a general trend of consolidation in media ownership.174 In China, too, newspapers have gained exclusive status, city-by-city, and pooled into large associations such as Chengdu Business News. These associations function like news agencies, challenging the hegemony of Xinhua as a news provider.137 The world's top three most circulated newspapers all publish from Japan. About one-third of newspaper revenue comes from sales; the majority comes from advertising.175 Newspapers have struggled to maintain revenue given declining circulation and the free flow of information over the internet; some have implemented paywalls for their websites.167 In the U.S., many newspapers have shifted their operations online, publishing around the clock rather than daily in order to keep pace with the internet society. Prognosticators have suggested that print newspapers will vanish from the U.S. in 5–20 years.167 Many newspapers have started to track social media engagement for trending news stories to cover. Spain's Público has reshaped their social media strategy and grew their audience by 40 %. Televisionedit Internationally distributed news channels include BBC News, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and Sky News. Televisions are densely concentrated in the United States (98% of households), and the average American watches 4 hours of television programming each day. In other parts of the world, such as Kenya—especially rural areas without much electricity—televisions are rare.172 The largest supplier of international video news is Reuters TV, with 409 subscribers in 83 countries, 38 bureaus, and a reported audience of 1.5 billion people each day. The other major video news service is Associated Press Television News. These two major agencies have agreements to exchange video news with ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Eurovision—itself a sizeable video news exchange.176 CNN International is a notable broadcaster in times of crisis.162 Internetedit Online journalism is news that is reported on the internet. News can be delivered more quickly through this method of news as well as accessed more easily. The internet era has transformed the understanding of news. Because the internet allows communication which is not only instantaneous, but also bi- or multi-directional, it has blurred the boundaries of who is a legitimate news producer. A common type of internet journalism is called blogging, which is a service of persistently written articles uploaded and written by one or more individuals. Millions of people in countries such as the United States and South Korea have taken up blogging. Many blogs have rather small audiences; some blogs are read by millions each month.177Social media sites, especially Twitter and Facebook, have become an important source of breaking news information and for disseminating links to news websites. Twitter declared in 2012: "It's like being delivered a newspaper whose headlines you'll always find interesting—you can discover news as it's happening, learn more about topics that are important to you, and get the inside scoop in real time."178 Cell phone cameras have normalized citizen photojournalism.179 Michael Schudson, professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, has said that "everything we thought we once knew about journalism needs to be rethought in the Digital Age."180 Today the work of journalism can be done from anywhere and done well. It requires no more than a reporter and a laptop. In that way, journalistic authority seems to have become more individual- and less institution-based. But does the individual reporter always have to be an actual journalist? Or can journalistic work be done from anywhere and by anyone? These are questions that refer to the core of journalistic practice and the definition of "news" itself. As Schudson has given emphasis to, the answer is not easily found; "the ground journalists walk upon is shaking, and the experience for both those who work in the field and those on the outside studying it is dizzying".180